This post contains affiliate links. SheMD will make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click the link and make a purchase. Read our disclosure  for more info. There is something undeniably powerful about a White Coat Ceremony. The room is full—families, mentors, faculty, and a group of students standing on the edge of something enormous. There’s pride. There’s excitement. And if we’re being honest… there’s also a quiet undercurrent of doubt. Am I ready for this?

Nearly 5 years into practice, I have negotiated my first contract, multiple pay increases, call compensation, and independent contractor status. I prepared by researching my market value and reading about negotiation strategy. The following are some points I have learned along the way. If you negotiate in medicine, you may feel like the only one. Over the years, my mid-career colleagues confided that they have not received a single pay increase, only the occasional pay cu

This post contains affiliate links. SheMD will make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click the link and make a purchase. Read our disclosure for more info. It doesn’t matter how many times I prepared myself for the moment. It doesn’t matter that I told all my friends and family to understand that there is a real possibility I might not receive the email that we were all hoping for. There was still a part of me, probably bigger than I realized at the time, that

When I was presented with the opportunity to write a piece for SheMD, I was immediately excited to sign up for the task. My husband knows this well, he has heard me say it for only the last 10 years or so: I want to write. I really want to write. I want to write about so many different things. And with the exception of grade school poetry, college term papers, the occasional essay exam question, and one review article I had published in 2006 in a medical journal, I have nev